[johan_larson]

This is my thinking too. Having to prove, over and over, that I understand how linked lists and binary search trees work is just tiresome. Doing it once and then being able to refer to a trusted credential that certifies it would be a blessing.

I understand nobody is going to hire on the strength of one exam. Every job is a little bit different and some of them call for particular skill sets. That's fine. By all means ask questions tailored to the job at hand. But let's find a way to skip the really generic questions.

[Jach]

It would be a blessing, but I don't have any reason to expect its coming. I mean, I proved I understand how linked lists worked in my freshman year (well arguably earlier in HS CS classes) along with many other people who were enrolled in a CS or related (mine was CE) degree. Why can't I just point to my degree and never have to prove myself on that stuff again?

The issue is trust. No one trusts degrees anymore, and for very good reasons. I don't see any way for something else that relies on the same sort of credentialism to avoid corruption and lose trust unless it's measuring fairly static and not-very-gameable attributes like height or IQ (see: Wonderlic for basically IQ testing in a way that complies with laws against IQ testing..).

Where this gets particularly ugly is that even though no one trusts degrees anymore, they're still very popular, and some employers still require them anyway (or at least make it very hard to even get an interview without one). If a new "trusted credential" gets popular enough, or even a set of them, they'll eventually lose their trust, but because at some point they were popular people will still sink time into them and so the time cost we're inflicting increases when it'd be better to just get serious about hiring and tell smart and interested 18 year olds to just come start working already.

[shivawu]

I like your thinking around the trust issue.

It's a totally different matter between hiring new grads, and non new-grades. cspa.io seems only to target new-grads. But as you said, it's replacing one degree system with another similar, but maybe evenly good/bad system.